[media-credit name=’BEN CLASSON/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]The International Socialist Organization's launch event Wednesday night on the University of Wisconsin campus centered on Sherry Wolf's discussion "The Case for Socialism."

About 75 students gathered in the Humanities building to learn about and discuss the negative effects capitalism has on modern-day society.

Wolf's lecture informed students how they can evoke change and, eventually, a revolution resulting in equality throughout the world.

"There is something profoundly wrong about the system we live in [and] the society we live in," Wolf said. "Racism, the wars, the vast inequality … that is what unites us all."

The extreme disparity in wealth around the world, Wolf added, proves the capitalistic system oppresses the majority of people for the benefit of a few.

"We now live in a world in which the top three billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 600 million people on the planet,” Wolf said. “More than a third of the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day."

Wolf said the inequality in wealth directly results from the capitalist system, adding while there is enough food to feed everybody in the world, the bourgeois only sells goods to those who can pay for them — regardless of need.

"There are ships in this world [that] are created with holds that open up in the middle of the ocean to dump food as a way to keep the prices high," Wolf said.

Wolf added the extreme poverty and hunger in the world could be remedied by overthrowing the capitalist system — a difficult feat introduced by Karl Marx.

Wolf's discussion then turned to Marx's teachings, as she highlighted the need for people to come together to rise up against the wealthy, ruling minority.

"Socialism or Marxism, as you know, explains why capitalism determines prices," Wolf said. "Capitalism is founded on unplanned competitive production for profit, [and] the incessant chase for profits leads to overproduction … leading to bankruptcy [and] unemployment."

The event ended with a communal discussion followed by a question-and-answer session.

UW graduate student Paul Heideman said the event was successful and shows the growing interest in socialism on campus.

"There are clearly a lot of people on this campus who are really fundamentally rethinking the way society runs right now and are looking for ways to change that," Heideman said.